General News/Current Affairs Thread

Rui said:
I'm mostly just happy that UKIP ended up doing far worse than the insane media bias towards them implied.
Click to expand...
I don't follow "media" for the reasons implied in your sentence, but how well were they expected to do? A lot more than four million votes?
 
Lawrence said:
based on last night's figures, about five million seats
Click to expand...
Bloody hell, I knew there were going to be boundary changes but that's a bit of an excessive expansion of the House of Commons.

Still, I'll give the Tories this, that'll be unemployment wiped out in one fell swoop.
 
Presumably some of those are seats on the Galactic Council.

More seriously, I still think four million votes is a number that shouldn't be ignored or brushed off just because it's lower than some fictional number that was printed in a newspaper in the build up to the election.
 
neptune2venus said:
britguy said:
black1blade said:
Well things are just going to get harder for people in poorer families like myself. I'm still going to university but if under 25s don't get housing benefit then I better get a secure job once I leave uni or I'm screwed and will have to go back home which I don't think I will want to do.
Click to expand...

Move back home anyway and start saving for a mortgage deposit instead of paying rent! I was never applicable for any housing benefits when I wanted to move out (apparently), even when earning very little and coming from a low income background hence why it took me longer to move out (had to wait until I was earning enough!)
Click to expand...

What happens if these under-21's who are looking for a place are kicked out by their family and have no one else to turn to? No housing benefit and no job? Thanks to the Tories, they will be literally on the streets, homeless(
Click to expand...

**** knows what they'd do but tbf I wasn't trying to make some blanket statement I was just talking to him about his situation which isn't as you described.
 
Honestly I really don't want a mortgage and I think it would be much better if this country was similar to Europe with tenant rights ect. They should do proportional representation even if it means UKIP getting more seats.
 
What's impossible to take into account is that if we had PR, people would have voted differently because they wouldn't have had to feel they were voting to keep someone out/get the least worst one in etc rather than actually voting for the one they wanted. So it's likely the result would have been very different because of that too. I'd rather have PR and UKIP getting more seats, because so will other minority parties and I think it's important that minorities have a voice, even if you think everything they have to say is garbage.
 
ilmaestro said:
More seriously, I still think four million votes is a number that shouldn't be ignored or brushed off just because it's lower than some fictional number that was printed in a newspaper in the build up to the election.
Click to expand...
Is the fact the electorate votes in decreasing numbers as you move further to the extremes and increasing numbers as you move further towards the centre really that unexpected? UKIP are more extreme than the Tories and less extreme than the BNP, so it makes perfect sense their vote would fall somewhere between the two. UKIP simply noticed a gap in the political spectrum there was demand for and filled it.

You're always going to have a certain number of people who subscribe to these views (the somewhat reformed or at least less blatantly racist FN in France poll similar percentages to UKIP) and there's not really much you can do about it. To be honest I'm more surprised and dismayed by the fact 36.8% were convinced the Tories were the way to go than that 12.6% voted UKIP, because some of them are probably reasonable people.

---

I thought it might be fun/divisive/depressing to look at what might have happened if we had regional parliaments in England. Apologies if any of the figures are wrong, I couldn't find the information so I literally just counted all the little hexagons on an electoral map.

Labour majority regions:
North East: Labour 26, Conservatives 3
North West: Labour 51, Conservatives 22, Liberal Democrats 2
Yorkshire & The Humber: Labour 33, Conservatives 19, Liberal Democrats 2
London: Labour 45, Conservatives 25, Liberal Democrats 1

Conservative majority regions:
West Midlands: Conservatives 34, Labour 25
East Midlands: Conservatives 32, Labour 14
East Anglia: Conservatives 52, Labour 4, Liberal Democrats 1, UKIP 1
South West: Conservatives 51, Labour 4
South East: Conservatives 78, Labour 4, Greens 1

Now I've been a fairly strong advocate of keeping the union together, but that incredible difference in majorities between the North East and South East leaves me with one burning question - How can any government ever be representative of both of those areas? Perhaps it really is time to make the North-South divide permanent (and make London a city state of its own, I guess).
 
ayase said:
ilmaestro said:
More seriously, I still think four million votes is a number that shouldn't be ignored or brushed off just because it's lower than some fictional number that was printed in a newspaper in the build up to the election.
Click to expand...
Is the fact the electorate votes in decreasing numbers as you move further to the extremes and increasing numbers as you move further towards the centre really that unexpected? UKIP are more extreme than the Tories and less extreme than the BNP, so it makes perfect sense their vote would fall somewhere between the two. UKIP simply noticed a gap in the political spectrum there was demand for and filled it.

You're always going to have a certain number of people who subscribe to these views (the somewhat reformed or at least less blatantly racist FN in France poll similar percentages to UKIP) and there's not really much you can do about it.
Click to expand...
The general concepts themselves, I agree with you on. But in this case I think the specific numbers are on the verge of being important.

Although actually I don't agree that there's "not really much you can do about it", but I would agree that it's rarely something worth doing anything about (until the point at which it's probably too late to do anything).
 
Well you can educate people, but only to the level their intelligence allows. There are always going to be people (quite a lot of people) who are taken in by manipulative types with an agenda. People who'd rather simply believe stories that make them the blameless victim and someone else the villain.

I suppose you can counter it, but only by finding someone else to blame since these people will never admit that anything is their fault. And occupy taught us they don't seem to like blaming the people who actually oppress and disenfranchise them the most, since these are the people they dream of one day being.
 
ayase said:
There are always going to be people (quite a lot of people) who are taken in by manipulative types with an agenda.
Click to expand...
Five years ago quite a lot of people was around one million. This year it was around four million. I'm surprised that doesn't concern you on any level above "some people are stupid".
 
I suppose it's because I don't believe these attitudes have grown in society, rather I think 12% or so of people already held these views but were previously voting Tory and BNP. Like I say, UKIP just filled a gap, but that gap was left by the Tories vacating it in becoming more socially liberal and pro-European. Really, UKIP as a party are little more than die-hard Thatcherites, even if they draw their support from a cobbled together alliance of the moderate to extreme right.
 
theirsbailiff said:
Yep, the Tories are definitely back.
Click to expand...

Please explain the point you are trying to make, are you trying to imply the tories are already clamping down on human rights, such as the right to protest, or are you merely stating that tories in power will inevitably bring protests?

All I see is a small number of protesters became extremely moronic and were rightly removed from said protest.
 
Lawrence said:
All power to them to be honest. The first casualties of the coalition will be our human rights and our privacy. What disgusts me most, especially in the case of the snoopers' charter, is that it will cost the tax payer closer to £2billion to implement yet welfare will still be slashed. Is that really our priority? And if anything it will harm investment in the IT sector because of a blatant lack of privacy, companies will be forced to store data that can potentially be exploited. And if Cameron has his way, encrypted forms of communication will also be banned. "There shouldn't be any sort of communication the government can't read."
Click to expand...

Their way of protecting our freedoms and saving money is mass unadulterated surveillance and wasting taxpayer's money?

I think this is a good representation of Britain right now:
20130109.png
 
What I don't get is how the government has budgetary problems because a fifth of the money people buy stuff with, goes to the government.
 
ayase said:
I suppose it's because I don't believe these attitudes have grown in society, rather I think 12% or so of people already held these views but were previously voting Tory and BNP.
Click to expand...
That's a reasonable line, and I'd agree has to account for some of that number (especially considering that the BNP barely exists now).

Lawrence said:
Eye witnesses described the march as numbering in 'thousands' rather than a few hundred.
Click to expand...
Eye witnesses will describe a lot of things, especially when it comes to estimating the number of people in a crowd. Not saying you (or they, I guess) are wrong, but still.
 
Back
Top